Louis Scala, 29, of Pleasant Plains, will be sentenced Oct. 18 in Manhattan state Supreme Court, to three and a half years in prison.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Business was brisk for a Pleasant Plains man who spearheaded a million-dollar drug ring by dealing oxycodone out of an ice cream truck on the South Shore.

But Louis Scala won’t be peddling his wares for a while after pleading guilty today to felony drug-possession and conspiracy charges.

Scala, 29, will be sentenced Oct. 18 in Manhattan state Supreme Court, to three and a half years in prison.

Scala is the second of the ring’s top players to admit guilt.

Nancy Wilkins, 40, of Brooklyn, who provided Scala and alleged co-leader Joseph Zaffuto with hundreds of prescription forms from a doctor’s office, was sentenced in June to six months in jail and five years’ probation. She had pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy and other charges.

The case of Zaffuto, a reputed Lucchese crime family soldier from Charleston, is pending.

Prosecutors said the group distributed some 42,755 oxycodone pills across the borough in 2009 and 2010.

Scala operated a Lickety Split ice-cream truck that served the South Shore, and customers knew to wait in certain spots for it to arrive, according to prosecutors. The crew replenished their supply by recruiting 28 "runners," many of whom were addicts desperate for cash, to fill forged prescriptions on the forms provided by Ms. Wilkins, prosecutors said.

The truck sold primarily around Scala and Zaffuto’s neighborhoods, and dealt mainly with friends, neighbors and relatives, prosecutors said.

Ms. Wilkins, who managed the physician’s office, ran telephone interference if a pharmacist became suspicious and called the doctor, said Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan, who is prosecuting the case as part of a joint operation with Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan.

The scheme fell apart in June of last year when a runner robbed a series of pharmacies, including one where he had earlier tried to pass a forged prescription, prosecutors allege. That caught the attention of a state Health Department investigator.

The investigator pulled the doctor’s files and found it suspicious that so many Staten Island patients would be going to a Manhattan physician to receive painkiller prescriptions.

Under his plea, Scala will be sentenced to three and a half years for third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and one to three years for conspiracy. The sentences will run concurrently.